The present invention relates data processing for the financial industry, and more particularly, is directed to a centralized repository of static information involved in securities trading, with various information distribution capabilities.
Securities trading, particularly the post-trade activities of clearance and settlement, still gives rise to many errors, even almost fifty years of increasingly advanced automation.
Another problem is that different departments in a securities firm usually have their own data handling practices, and their own databases, sometimes referred to as data silos. Accordingly, it can be difficult or impossible for a firm to accurately aggregate its own data.
A further problem is that securities firms each maintain their data at their discretion in differing formats and with identifiers of their own choosing, so it can be difficult or impossible for a regulatory agency to accurately aggregate data from different firms.
A 2008 survey by TowerGroup asked firms with automated trade processing capability what were the reasons for trades being rejected from automated processing, and obtained the following results:                91.1% of automated trades are not rejected        1.8% of automated trades are rejected due to disparities between databases        3.0% of automated trades are rejected due to bad reference data        4.1% of automated trades are rejected for other reasons        
In the US alone, in just one payment and settlement facility, Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), nearly $7.5 trillion of traded value is associated with trade matching on any one day. There are nearly 100 such facilities globally. Although DTCC is by far the largest these error rates are significant to the values at risk at such facilities globally.
Thus, there is a need for improved techniques for processing financial information in the securities industry.